For several years there has been legislation introduced in Uganda that would make homosexuality a capital offense.  American Religious Right figures (including those affiliated with The Family and the New Apostolic Reformation) have been active in both directly and indirectly supporting the bill.  

The bill is back. But activists are petitioning Citibank/Barclays, a major economic actor in Uganda to intervene.  At this writing, there are about 107,000 signatures on the petition, including mine.

Maryland's Carroll County Commissioners are requesting that employees attend a class produced by a Christian Reconstructionist organization called the Institute on the Constitution.  The class is to be taught by the Institute's David Whitney, chaplain of both the Maryland League of the South and the Southern National Congress.  The Baltimore Sun's article on the class described it as having "biblical overtones" and Whitney as "basing his teachings on the biblical view of law and government." In this case, the biblical worldview is the same one espoused by Rousas Rushdoony - a worldview calling for American law to be reconstructed to align with one interpretation of biblical law and to strip the federal government of regulatory power.

[2/25/12: The classes were focused on the Maryland Constitution. The class for public employees took place on Thursday and the Baltimore Sun reported there was "no proselytizing." Apparently the journalist was limiting the definition of proselytizing to overt calls for religious conversion. A class for the public was held on Friday and Saturday.]

What did Rick Santorum mean when he described President Obama's environmental policy as being phony theology?  Santorum is not the original source of this idea. The narrative is widespread in the Religious Right and has been accelerated through a partnership with big business and wealthy family foundations. This is the world of "Biblical economics," a world in which unregulated free markets are holy and the opposition is literally demonic. It includes a 12-part DVD series produced by the Cornwall Alliance, featuring nationally-known Religious Right leaders and claims that environmentalism is a cult in competition with a Judeo-Christian biblical worldview. They have even given this competing religion a name - the Cult of the Green Dragon.

An El Paso church's brazen effort to remove the mayor and two members of the city council has been brought to a screeching halt.

The political drama in the west Texas town started last summer when Pastor Tom Brown of Word of Life Church issued a politically charged email to the community. Brown, who sent the email under the guise of his Tom Brown Ministries, attacked El Paso Mayor John Cook and El Paso City Council Members Steve Ortega and Susie Byrd because the three voted to extend health-care benefits to domestic partners.

There is a profound and easily spotted hypocrisy when someone, or some institution declares in favor of freedom for me, but not for thee.   The Catholic Right and and their political allies have been trying to make this hypocrisy work for them for many years. They have certainly had their moments, but the utility of this obvious hypocrisy may have finally run its course.  

A New Study by Jean Hardisty and Chip Berlet

Progress in human welfare and peaceful relations is never assured. It is always a struggle, and human rights activists are at the forefront.

To join the struggle most effectively, we need to know about the forces that oppose human rights: who they are, what they believe, how they mobilize, what strategies and tactics they employ, and who they intend to target and convert.

"...I have often said that religion and politics are always connected, that there is no fixed template for their interaction, and that the dynamic relationship has always been a work in progress set in its time and place."  Charles Kimball

This past weekend the third annual PA Progressive Summit was held in Philadelphia. As a presenter at the summit I spoke about "Biblical economics" or "Biblical capitalism," an ideology promoted by those claiming that the Bible mandates unregulated free market economics. This ideology has spread rapidly in the three years since I first spoke at the summit and it's being used to justify attacks on labor unions, the regulatory system, and social safety nets, as well as claims that the Bible opposes the minimum wage and inheritance taxes. Given the emphasis of this brand of Biblical economics, it should not surprise anyone that it has been encouraged for years, both directly and indirectly, by the same foundations that fund right-wing think tanks, including ones with the names Koch, Scaife, and DeVos.  Following is an extensive list of sources including websites, print, video and other media used in the presentation.

This weekend I had the pleasure of speaking at the PA Progressive Summit 2012 in Philadelphia.  I will soon post a summary of my presentation including links to websites, video, and other media.  Meanwhile, this post includes a list of links to previous articles and media on a topic of concern to many of the participants of the summit - the national pro-privatization of schools movement, and its efforts to promote school vouchers in Pennsylvania and other states.

Yesterday, I reposted a piece about how somethings don't change. It was partly about the wrongheadedness of pundit E.J. Dionne who has been one of the cheerleaders of the notion that the Christian Right is dead or dying; one of those who have declared certain immoderate clerics to be moderates; and one of those calling for common ground with the Catholic Bishops and the Religious Right in ways that have been more like capitulation than compromise.

But the world has changed around Dionne and his ilk.  The Religious Right has advanced as far as it has in part because of its agenda, but also in spite of it, as recent wardrobe malfunctions have revealed. Indeed, they are now so frequent, they almost seem to be in fashion.

[note: this is the second in a three part series. Part 3 will address the eliminationist nature of the Spiritual Mapping paradigm promoted by Harold Caballeros, C. Peter Wagner, and other top NAR leadership]

In January 2012, NAR apostle Harold Caballeros officially entered the realm of international politics, joining the administration of new Guatemalan president Otto Pérez Molina as the head of Guatemala's Foreign Ministry. Caballeros brings with him troubling political ties to his country's recent violent past (see this article), as well as a record of promoting the New Apostolic Reformation's characteristically supremacist religious and ideological views (see story, below, for details.)

Harold Caballeros is considered to be both a significant leader and also a major theoretician within the NAR, who has helped to pioneer the New Apostolic Reformation's distinctive ideas and practices on Spiritual Mapping and spiritual warfare.

Portland Bishop Richard Malone, whose diocese encompasses the entire State of Maine, took on the legislature about two years ago.  He led a successful referendum campaign to repeal a bill granting marriage to same-ex couples.  But in the end Malone and the Catholic Right may have won a Pyrrhic victory.